“To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” is a romantic comedy released in 2014 based on author Jenny Hans’ teenage years and her habits of writing love letters to boys she had crushes on. The story follows events and leads to the classic “fake dating” trope. Female leader Lara Jean (LJ) Covey’s most prized possession was her secret love letters. There were five she wrote all together, “Kenny from camp, Peter from seventh grade, Lucas from Homecoming, John Ambrose from Model UN, and Josh.”
Margot, LJ’s older sister, was in a relationship with Josh. They had recently broken up. When the letters get sent out, Josh gets one, and chaos sparks in Lara Jean’s life. Overall, the first movie of the series was my all time favorite, and I have nothing bad to say about that one. However, I strongly disliked the second movie, for multiple reasons. For starters, in the first movie you see there were five letters in total sent out. When all the guys tried to talk to her about the letters, only three guys actually talked to her. Later on, we see the fourth letter was addressed to bunks at a camp she went to, so Kenny would have never received one. This leaves the audience questioning what happened to John Ambrose’s letter.
At the end of the first movie in this trilogy, we see John Ambrose walking up to Lara Jean’s house with a letter and flowers in his hand, leaving the movie on a cliffhanger, and foreshadowing the potential love triangle. The reason I strongly dislike the second movie, “P.S I Still Love You,” is simply because it was messy and unnecessary. Lara Jean and Peter no longer seemed like the sweet couple everyone adored in the first movie, and the whole movie you were just on the edge of your seat wondering if LJ and Peter were going to break up. The second movie also seemed like the two main characters were playing in a whole different movie. Lara Jean was portrayed as confused and in her own head the whole movie while Peter was just portrayed as the classic “dumb jock.”
In the first movie, you view Lara Jean as a quiet but self-confident nerd, and Peter still plays the “jock” role, but he was far more understanding and caring than in the second movie. While Lara Jean was the root of the problem in this movie, constantly leading John Ambrose on, Peter also still talks to his ex-girlfriend, Gen, and this causes more conflict. Ultimately, Lara Jean and Peter fix both of their problems leaving you with the final movie Always And Forever. This movie wasn’t as chaotic as the second one, but still faces a little bit of conflict.
With it being LJ’s and Peter’s senior year, the movie focuses on less drama and more on if they can make it work through distance. After some miscommunication, Peter thinks Lara Jean will be attending Stanford with him. But, after touring NYU, Lara Jean falls in love with the school and gets accepted. The movie ends with Lara Jean decorating her dorm room at NYU and voicing her thoughts, “We’re not those other couples,” she said, “We’re Lara Jean and Peter. And besides, you know one thing 3,000 miles is good for? Writing love letters.” Even though that wasn’t the happy ending you’d expect, it still left the series off in the best way possible, letting the audience imagine Lara Jean and Peter’s happy ending for themselves!
